Monday, March 24, 2014

Sad news to report if you haven't heard already. As of this past weekend (last Sunday around 7 PM Pacific time), metal music icon Dave Brockie was found dead in his home in Richmond, Virginia.

For those of you unaware, Dave Brockie was the human host for the lead singer and one of the founding members of GWAR, a band that is and has been for decades one of the most influential, unique, and fun bands in American music history. I've been listening to them since high school. Not everyone appreciates their over-the-top flavor, but GWAR as a musical and performance group has never failed to entertain me.

This news comes less than three years from another tragedy. In 2011, the band lost its guitarist Cory Smoot, who had also been with them from the beginning. Their most recent album, Battle Maximus, was dedicated to he and the alien demon persona who'd long lived within him, Flattus Maximus.

What does this mean? It means that, freed from his human prison, the intergalactic warlord and sex god Oderus Urungus is finally free to return to his home in the stars. Unfortunately, this also means that I and many lowly homo sapiens scum will ever get to enjoy a live show with him, in which we would be hosed down with alien bodily fluids, or dragged onstage to be butchered or eaten alive by cosmic horrors. Those who have already been so privileged will likewise never get to experience it again.

GWAR is a phenomenal group, and their shows have always been nothing short of fucking legendary. Oderus may have been a heartless monster, but Brockie was a deeply intelligent, funny, passionate man. He is, even now, a big deal.